The Australian Travel Competition

[MelUser]

Every year The Australian runs a travel competition which has a new destination every day - it runs for about 3 weeks I think.

In years gone by travel has always been in Business Class.

This year travel is in economy which doesn't really match well given the hotels - the hotels are complete luxury $1000 a night type hotels.

Anyway, the terms and conditions say that frequent flyer points (and presumably status credits also) are not earnt.

It also says that winners cannot lodge points upgrade requests which I think is a bit mean!

Anyway, has anyone won such a prize before? What fare code do they book into? The only one I can think of that doesn't give the points etc etc is Economy (X).

 

[serfty]

It's not that simple.

e.g. Many Oz Gov't departments have contracts with Qantas that have their staff booked on fares that don't earn FF points but do earn the appropriate SC's.

 

[simongr]

I think we had someone posting here last year about winning a trip to Lapland to see santa and asking about FF points on those flights. If I recall correctly they were treated like pariahs...

 

[NM]

If an airline is one of the competition sponsors, its quite possible they are providing that portion of the prize as part of their sponsorship deal. If that is the case, then someone like Qantas could easily be booking into any economy class and adding whatever fare conditions they like.

Remember that fare terms and conditions are attached to the "fare basis" and not to the booking class/code. Just as serfty has noted, some major contracts (most notably some govt depts) may book into Y or B and still not earn FF points as a condition of the specific fare basis being booked.

They may well book as X but the airline may have committed to make seats available for the winners rather than relying on availability of regular classic award seats.

Similarly, what class do AnySeat awards book into? Such tickets will not earn FF points or SCs ad are not upgradeable. Probably very similar to these competition seats.